Word by Word
by Theine
Summary: Tom Riddle takes pride in his ability to manipulate others. So, when an unsuspecting Harry Potter stumbles across his diary, it's only natural he should push his skill and creativity to the limit to craft a tale so engrossing, so compellingly plausible, that the boy will fall for it hook, line and sinker. If it results in a slight alteration to his future plans, so be it.


A drop of ink welled up through the yellowed page of the diary like a bruise. The book was splayed on top of a rough wooden desk, the once-soft leather of its cover now brittle with age and warped from recent water damage. Beside it, forehead pressed against the desk hard enough to leave a grainy imprint on his skin, slumped Tom Riddle.

Numb with lethargy, it took the young wizard a long moment to identify the taste of foreign ink infiltrating the misty dreamscape of his prison. He raised his head slowly, the joints of his spine creaking like rusty hinges, and turned a waspish glare at the black spot, daring the person who put it there to stop toying with him and finally make contact.

He was sitting in a memory of his childhood. The bare, claustrophobic walls of his tiny room in Wool's Orphanage flickering with rain shadow. Behind him a small black haired boy was shivering on the room's sole lumpy cot, the soft puffs of his breath nearly lost beneath the patter of raindrops on the single-pane window. A thin blanket was pulled tight around the boy's bony shoulders as he drifted in and out of sleep. It wasn't enough to protect him from the winter chill, but it was all he had.

Tom paid the child no mind. He would survive — cold and miserable, perhaps, but the winter wouldn't carry him off as it did the other orphans. Tom was stronger than them, even at six years old. He never cried when the matron's riding crop bit into his back, never complained when the other children spoiled his food or trashed his room. He didn't want their pity, and would never accept their mercy — even if there'd been space enough in their miserable little hearts for such generosity of spirit.

All he could do was cling to existence. Revenge would come later and would be all the sweeter for the anticipation.

Tom shook his head. There was no use dwelling on memories. He couldn't change the past, only use it as a backdrop to dull the relentless boredom of an eternity trapped in a book.

It was a necessary sacrifice. He _knew _that, but sometimes he wished he'd spent a little more time devising ways to keep occupied before splitting his soul. He'd never been one for sports or games, and apart from the occasional wizard's chess tournament, had devoted most of his time to research.

A decade into his self-imposed imprisonment, he'd already explored every branch of magic stored in his memories of Hogwart's ancient library. With nothing else to do, he'd then turned to spell creation. He couldn't use conventional magic inside the diary, but that didn't stop him from pushing the limits of what he imagined possible. He traced arrays that would stop time on the bare plaster walls of his room at the orphanage, and in the fog that clouded its grimy window he learned to fly without a broom or wings. The graceful circles and runes lasted only until the backdrop shifted, but even a handful of seconds was enough to ingrain them in his memory.

He created curses that inflicted slow, painful deaths, and charms that any good housewitch would beg to learn. He broke Gamp's Law of Transfiguration, devised hexes and jinxes, and concocted a cookbook's worth of potion recipes.

Over the past fifty years he'd amassed a larger repertoire of unique spells than the main part of his soul. Or, that's what he liked to believe. He'd created a spell to darn woollen socks, for goodness sake — even his creativity had a limit!

So, here he was, the most accomplished wizard in the history of the world trapped in a diary and unable to use any of his revolutionary magical creations.

Thankfully, he was well on his way to resolving that particular conundrum.

The drop of ink was evaporating from the diary's warped page, wisps of black vapour rising from the stained paper to coil around his shoulders and neck before dissipating. Tom held his breath, waiting.

The whining Weasley chit had nearly drowned him, and he was itching to make her beg for forgiveness. The water she'd chosen for his dunking had been a disgustingly stagnant cocktail of iodine, bleach and lemon cleaner that had sunk into the diary's pages despite his best efforts at keeping it out. He'd felt ill for hours, and for someone who hadn't felt much of anything for half a century, _ill_ wasn't the first bodily sensation he wanted to reacquaint himself with.

The price for his humiliation would be her magic and soul. She would grant him the freedom he craved, her life fuelling the ritual he needed to break free of the diary and create a new body of his own. He was so close to taking it. Another day of pouring her heart into his pages would be the final nail in her coffin — and she would do it willingly. Unsuspecting until the end.

He plucked a quill from the stand on the corner of his desk, the speckled feather near invisible in the dappled shadows falling through the window.

"How shall I break her?" he asked the sleeping boy behind him as he rolled the quill idly in his long fingers. The boy preserved in his memories slept on, unable to hear him. It didn't stop Tom from pretending. Silent company was better than no company at all.

"Shall I humour her? Console her? Poor Ginny Weasley, with no money or friends of her own. Poor Ginny, who can't even win the _great Harry Potter_'s affection. Shall I advise her to write more poetry?" He snorted in mirth, as close to true laughter as he ever came. Human mating rituals had always bewildered him, but even he could have written a better love song than the monstrosity of poorly planned imagery she'd sent chasing after the Potter boy — in the mouth of a singing _dwarf_, no less.

The things people did in the name of love were truly terrifying.

_'My name is Harry Potter.'_

The words carved themselves into the page of the diary, derailing all his schemes and leaving him, for one indescribable moment, utterly speechless. The letters were clumsy and lopsided, shedding splotches of ink as they marched up the page in a heavy, haggard line that would have even the most patient professor biting their nails in frustration.

In short, it was the worst penmanship Tom Riddle had ever seen — and it was glorious.

The room shifted around him. The walls opened up and ceiling soared two stories, then three. Shelves stuffed with colourful books pushed the plaster walls of the orphanage aside, filling the gaps between them with stone bricks and dark stained wood. His rickety desk skittered to the side, shrinking and darkening until it was an oaken side table. Beneath him his chair plumped up, the wood morphing into the velvety cushions of a wingback armchair.

The single window wiggled in its casing, expanding upward into ornate baroque latticework. Rain still rapped at the pane, but the sleepy London morning outside had been replaced by a breathtaking view of a mountain valley surrounding a black loch in which the ghostly body of a giant squid was just visible as it glided beneath the water's surface.

The sleeping boy and his bed vanished in a swirl of smoke that billowed towards the closed window before reforming in the image of a young man staring out over the grounds with a thoughtful look in his dark eyes.

Tom ignored the new manifestation and let the chair cradle him as he set his quill on the page. It had only been a few seconds, but the sloppy foreign words were already evaporating off the paper.

_'Hello, Harry Potter,'_ he wrote._ 'My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?'_

There was a long pause. Tom sunk deeper into his armchair and propped the diary open on his knee as he waited. No doubt the boy was surprised — according to the Weasley chit, Potter knew far less of the magical world than it knew of him. He shouldn't be able to identify dark artefacts, and shouldn't know that true sentience in inanimate objects was impossible barring Tom's own, unique case.

If Potter's curiosity overrode his caution, Tom could draw him into conversation, gain his trust and finally discover how a mere infant had defeated Lord Voldemort, the most powerful dark wizard Great Britain had ever seen. It should be easy. At twelve years old Potter's belief in his own invincibility would be unshakable and his ability to connect actions and their consequences critically impaired. A perfect combination of traits to tempt him into danger.

His patience was rewarded when a reply, just as messy as the first, appeared.

_'I found it on the floor in the girls' washroom. Someone tried to flush it down the toilet.'_

Tom shuddered as a wave of nausea rolled over him. Ginny Weasley had stuffed him in a toilet! He dragged a hand over his face. Hogwart's washrooms had been years ahead of the squalid conditions of war-torn London, but the thought was still sickening. No one had ever dared shove his head in a toilet — not the bullies at the orphanage, and not his jealous Slytherin classmates. They'd known they wouldn't survive the repercussions.

Lightning split the sky beyond the windows as he took a steadying breath. Ginny Weasley would pay dearly for such an assault on his dignity.

_'Thank you for recovering me,' _he wrote back, gladly giving praise where it was deserved. _'Drowning in a toilet would have been an undignified way to go.'_

_'It would,' _Potter agreed. There was a pause that made Tom wonder if the boy was about to add something more before he quickly changed the subject. _'Are you alive then? What are you?'_

Tom brushed the tip of the quill against his lips. It was time to decide how honest to be with the boy. He couldn't tell him the complete truth, of course. To do so would invite his own destruction at the hands of Dumbledore and his ilk.

A bending of the truth, then. An obscuration.

_'I am no more alive than the portraits in the castle,'_ he replied. This seemed to catch the boy off guard. No surprise there, as the castle portraits had always been a lively bunch for enchanted smears of oil on canvas.

A puddle of ink spread across the centre of the page, as though the boy had pressed his quill to the paper and then forgotten about it. Tom's lips twitched in amusement. _'This diary is a repository for memories, and I am their curator. Do you know what a pensive is?'_

There was another pause before Potter replied. _'No.'_

_'That's all right. Pensives are rare and powerful magical artefacts you rarely see outside law courts. In simplest terms, a pensive is a silver bowl in which a person can store, re-visit, or share memories. I created this diary to serve a similar purpose.'_

_'So you're a memory?'_

_'In essence.'_

_'You're not dangerous?'_

Tom quirked a brow._ 'I should hope not.'_

_'Then why did someone try to flush you?'_

"It seems the boy is not a complete idiot," he remarked aloud to the phantom teen at the window, a smirk turning up the corners of his lips. He needed to provide Potter with a reason the boy would never seek to question, and Tom knew just the thing.

_'Ah, I might have an idea about that. You see, I had a disagreement with my previous owner on the ethics of trading sexual favours for good grades in class, and whether inserting a sponge into her—' _He was cut off by a thick black scribble as Potter frantically filled the space where the rest of the sentence would have gone. Tom stopped, raising his quill while he waited for the ink to vaporize.

_'I'm sorry I asked!' _Potter wrote quickly on the page opposite. His handwriting had taken a turn for the worse and was barely legible.

_'I take it you're still quite young?' _Tom asked.

_'I'm twelve. How old are you?'_

_'It's difficult to say. I stopped using this diary when I was eighteen, but the book itself must be close to fifty years old now.'_

_'Why did you stop?'_

_'I suppose I outgrew it after I left Hogwarts.' _It was the truth. His main soul had stopped writing to him two months after graduation. Not long after, his diary had been set behind a ward so strong he could feel it through the leather bindings.

_'You went to Hogwarts as well?'_

_'I did, many years ago.'_

_'Then, are you the T.M. Riddle who received the Special Services trophy?'_

Tom stiffened as a chill of unease touched him. There were hundreds of names on display in the trophy room. That Potter could have stumbled across and, more importantly, _remembered _the exceedingly generic trophy he'd been awarded after his previous attempt to open the Chamber of Secrets had come to an abrupt end reeked of manipulation.

An unsettling tingle of alarm surged across his skin. Dumbledore knew he was in the castle — he'd gone out of his way to leave the man a calling card, after all. Had he warned the boy? Told him his name — even in passing would have been enough to set the boy on guard. Was he the one now walking into a trap?

_'You've seen that old thing?' _he asked warily.

_'Yes. My friend burped slugs on it during detention and spent an hour cleaning off the slime. We didn't think anything of it, but then he recognized your name in the diary.'_

Tom frowned._ 'Detention and slugs? It sounds like he came off worst in a fight.'_

_'It wasn't much of a fight really. He tried to curse Malfoy for calling Hermione a mudblood, but his wand is broken so he got hit instead.'_

If Tom were prone to laughter he might have thrown his head back and howled at the delightful image this painted in his imagination. A perfect example of how karma and justice did not always go hand in hand. Instead he grinned, the low rumble of a chuckle vibrating in his chest.

_'It's dangerous to use magic with a broken wand, worse things than spells backfiring can happen. He should replace it as soon as possible,' _he advised, hiding his amusement beneath a veneer of concern_. 'How did it happen?'_

Here Potter hesitated. _'We sort of crash landed a car on the whomping willow at the beginning of the year,'_ he eventually admitted.

Tom had heard the story. The Weasley girl had written of little else for a full week after the start of term. He relaxed back into the armchair, appeased. Dumbledore was conniving, but he wasn't omniscient.

"Even I would have had trouble orchestrating such an absurd series of events," he remarked to his doppleganger, who had taken a seat on the window sill and was flipping idly through a book of curses purloined from the restricted section.

_'You seem to lead a very exciting life, Harry Potter.' _Tom wrote.

_'It doesn't feel very exciting right now.' _Even the words conveyed an air of discouragement, the letters low and heavy with ink.

Ah, now they were getting closer to the heart of things. The key that would win the boy's trust and, eventually, convince him to surrender the answers he so desired._ 'Because of the attacks on students?'_

_'How did you know?'_

_'My previous owner mentioned them several times. She seemed to believe the Chamber of Secrets had been opened.'_

_'It has! And everyone thinks I'm behind it because I can speak parseltongue!'_

"It isn't just a rumour, then," Tom mused aloud before turning his attention back to his diary.

_'Parseltongue? That's a rather rare gift.'_

_'It's a curse! Everyone thinks I must be the great-great-great grandson of Slytherin or something! No one will talk to me anymore, and they run away when they see me in the halls. It isn't fair! I didn't even know I could talk to snakes until last year when I accidentally set a boa on my cousin at the zoo.'_

So the boy found his ostracism unjust? Tom brushed the tip of the quill over his lips, contemplating how he could turn the boy's emotions to his advantage. A dozen possibilities sprung immediately to mind, and he was forced to play for time as he weighed the benefits and risks of each in turn.

_'I don't recall there being any magical zoos in Britain. Is it a new construction?'_

_'It wasn't magical. My cousin's a muggle.'_

_'Your family keeps in contact with non-magical relatives?'_

This provided the longest pause yet, and once Tom realized a full minute had gone by without a response he started to worry he'd scared the boy off. He let go of his copy of the diary, knowing it would mimic the state of its physical version if left to its own devices, but the book remained open and its pages unruffled, assuring him that Potter hadn't slammed it shut or chucked it at a wall in a fit of pique.

_"My parents are dead.' _The words appeared slowly, as though writing them was physically painful. _'I live with my aunt and uncle. They're horrid.'_

"Horrid?" Tom mused, intrigued by the boy's choice of words. "Not strict, unpleasant or mean, but _horrid_." He tilted his head towards the boy perched in the window. "It seems not even a famed hero can escape the fate of we poor orphans. What have they done, I wonder, to provoke such loathing?"

_'I'm sorry to hear that,' _he wrote._ 'I also lost my parents when I was young and grew up with horrid muggles, so I know how hard it can be to live surrounded by their fear and hatred.' _

_'You understand?'_ Tom could almost feel the wistfulness rolling off Potter's reply and he congratulated himself on having struck a chord in the boy. He relaxed into his chair, twisting sideways and kicking his legs over the armrest.

"Injustice, fear, and a home life he no doubt wishes to escape," he said quietly, the myriad possibilities for winning the boy over coalescing into one beautifully crafted lie. "I can work with that."

_'I do,'_ he replied. _'But that's a topic for another time. I believe you wanted to ask me something about the Chamber of Secrets.'_

Potter's reply came immediately._ 'Yes! You caught the person responsible for opening it before, right? That's why they gave you that trophy. Who was it? What was Slytherin's monster?'_

_'I'm afraid you won't like the answer,' _he replied. _'I'm not even sure I should tell you.'_

_'Please tell me! I need to know!'_

_'This isn't a game, Harry. The events of my fifth year were covered up by the headmaster and his deputy. They were ashamed such a thing had happened at Hogwarts and knew their reputations would be damaged if word got out to the public. Some of the people involved in the cover-up are still alive and if they find out you know the truth, we could both be in great danger.'_

_'I'll be careful. I promise!'_

'Careful _might not be enough in this case. If I tell you, you must promise to keep it a secret. Even from your friends. It's the only way to keep them safe. Do you think you can do that?'_

_'I will, I promise! Please, Tom.'_

Tom felt giddy, his entire body tingling with anticipation. He flexed his fingers, amazed at how a dash of suspense and a pinch of danger had the boy begging to eat out of his palm.

_'I believe you, and I trust you'll keep your promise.'_

_'Thank you!'_

From the jagged strokes of Potter's quill, Tom could envision the boy's excitement. He'd be leaning over the diary's pages trying not to fidget, his eyes wide and unblinking as he waited for the promised revelation.

Tom's lips curled into a smirk. "And what a revelation it will be," he purred before putting his quill once more to the page.

_'Before I begin, what you need to understand for any of this to make sense is that the Chamber of Secrets is nothing but a legend. It doesn't exist.'_

As expected, he was interrupted almost immediately.

_'What? No! You must be mistaken. The Chamber _has_ to exist.'_

_'Harry, please calm down and let me explain. I will tell you everything I know about the events of fifty years ago, but I need you to listen, okay?'_

He relaxed further into his chair, the sound of the rain drumming against the window soothing his impatience as he waited for the boy's curiosity to overwhelm his preconceptions about the Chamber and it's secrets. He couldn't afford to rush. Potter must be ensnared - his trust won word by word, each sentence a noose slipping round his neck, painless until the line snapped taut.

_'OK.'_

The response was expected. Even so, Tom couldn't stop the shiver of excitement that ran from the crown of his head all the way down to his toes. He took a moment to steady his hand. It took a deft touch to weave fiction into reality; he wouldn't allow a moment of carelessness to ruin this opportunity.

_'When I was in my fourth year, I became curious about the identity of my parents,' _he began, setting the stage_. 'I never knew them, having been raised in a muggle orphanage on the poor side of London, and I hoped I might find a living relative who would take me away from that hellhole. What I discovered was something quite different. Like you, I am also a parselmouth, a gift I inherited from my mother, who was one of the last living descendants of Salazar Slytherin.'_

_'But that means... you're the heir of Slytherin!'_

He allowed the interruption to pass without comment, pleased that he wouldn't need to spell it out to the boy.

_'I am. Or, I was. I'm not sure what's become of me after all these years. It could be that I died.'_

_'Does this mean you were the one who opened the Chamber?'_

_'Harry, I already told you the Chamber is nothing but a legend. It doesn't—'_

Potter cut him off, filling the next line with a hastily scribbled, _'But what if—' _

Tom switched to the adjacent page. _'I won't tell you what happened if you interrupt me every five seconds,'_ he wrote, crossing his t's with short, sharp strokes he hoped would portray mounting irritation. This would be so much easier in person, he reflected. The finer points of intonation were always lost in writing.

Luckily, Potter picked up on his mood and offered him a quick apology. _'Sorry. I'm listening.'_

_'As I was saying, I didn't hide my status as Slytherin's heir, which was, perhaps, my first mistake. Slytherin was never the most liked of Hogwart's founders, and some of the older students decided that I would grow up to be just like him. Blinded by their prejudices, they came up with a plot to have me expelled and thrown in Azkaban.'_

_'What did they do?' _Potter asked.

_'Can't you guess?'_

_'They tried to frame you for the attacks, didn't they?'_

Tom smirked at the diary. The boy was playing right into his hands.

_'Precisely. According to Hogwarts: A History, the Chamber of Secrets contains a monster that only the true heir of Slytherin can control. From there it was easy for them to modify a petrifying curse — I suspect they used _petrificus totalus_ — paint a threatening message on the wall, and slowly begin to take out the muggleborns. _

_'It was only my reputation as a model student and prefect that let me escape immediate incarceration. Most of my professors realized I wouldn't be stupid enough to claim responsibility for the attacks if I were behind them. The student body wasn't as forgiving. No doubt you're familiar with the speed at which rumours travel through Hogwarts, and how hard they are to extinguish once they've gotten hold of people's minds? I did my best, but many of my classmates continued to look at me with fear in their eyes._

_'I knew then that the only way to prove my innocence would be to find the people carrying out the attacks and stop them. It was difficult, as they were a large group and were good at covering their tracks. To this day I can't be sure of all their identities. My investigation was interrupted by another, completely unrelated event. Can you guess what it was?'_

Potter's reply was hesitant, appearing a few words at a time._ 'Malfoy said the last time the Chamber was opened someone died... but if there wasn't a monster, then what happened?'_

_'Ah, but you see, unbeknownst to the attackers there _was _a monster hidden inside Hogwarts that year._'

The boy's reaction was just as he'd predicted.

_'What!' _Potter wrote quickly, his eagerness palpable through the page. _'What was it?'_

_'I can show you if you like. You don't need to take my word for it. Using this diary I can take you inside my memory of the night I discovered it.'_

This time the boy didn't hesitate a moment before agreeing._ 'OK'_

Tom set the quill down on the table and stood as he prepared to open the diary fully to the boy. Around him the rows of bookshelves withered before sinking back into the walls. Rugged grey stones devoured the window, taking the natural light with it. For a moment everything was veiled in darkness, the drip of water from a leaking pipe and the low moan of wind as the air from the lobby was dragged down into the school's depths the only clues to where he now stood. Then a torch flickered to life in an alcove to his right. It set off a chain reaction, pools of light appearing one by one down the corridor until the path branched and they were lost from sight.

Across the corridor, his body hidden behind the door of an empty storage room, stood this memory's copy of himself. They were twins in every way, the memory having been deposited mere hours after he'd succeeded in splitting his soul. As such, it was also one of the few in his possession he hadn't experienced in person. He cocked his head to the side, listening for the distant tread of heavy footfalls that marked Hagrid's path through the dungeon. He paused the memory as soon as they became audible and — certain that everything was now in order — dug his fingers into the crease between the diary's pages and _peeled_.

A shining gap appeared along the inside of the spine and Tom wormed his fingers in deeper, wrestling with the binding as he forced open a path between his realm and the world outside.

He felt a presence close on the other side and with a final wrench he shoved his arm into the diary, closed his hand around the person on the far side and then dragged them in.

Immediately he knew something was wrong.

Potter was _here_. Not just his consciousness, but his _body_. It pressed at the confines of the diary, heavy and solid, like stones dropping into his belly. He shuddered and drew back as the boy materialized in the dungeon corridor, his presence far outstripping the size of his avatar.

Through his discomfort, Tom felt a nagging sense of familiarity, as though he knew the boy, though he was sure they'd never met before now. Potter turned towards him, peering curiously around the corridor, and Tom's eyes were drawn to the scar on his brow. It was glowing faintly — a soft green light that called to him in a way he couldn't explain.

It was unprecedented, and that alone was terrifying; a chasm of possibilities opening beneath his feet — dropping him into the abyss of speculation.

After fifty years of busywork it was alarming to have no time to step back and look at a situation with an objective eye. But the memory was already playing, his doppleganger sliding from the storage room and stalking down the corridor with his wand lighting his way, and he needed to _focus_!

Potter followed the memory through to its conclusion, his childish voiced raised in a cry of alarm when the giant spider burst from the chest hidden behind Hagrid's back. Tom let him see how he'd been tackled, hitting the floor hard beneath the half-giant's body, the crack of his wrist shattering amplified through his other half's recollection of the sudden, sharp pain.

Then he heaved the boy unceremoniously from his pages, not caring in the least if he bruised his tailbone upon landing.

He yanked his copy of the diary out of his pocket and fumbled it open, pressing it against the wall. His eyes flickered across the page, waiting for Potter to write something — anything!

The fight between himself and Hagrid continued behind him, the muffled grunts as they struggled fraying his already taut nerves.

"Shut up!" he snarled at the memories, blasting them with a spike of willpower. They dissolved, blowing away like sand before a gale, and for a moment Tom's surroundings became an empty white expanse. His room at the orphanage reformed slowly, rivulets of colour trickling down the invisible walls of his prison and pooling on the floor, transforming the void into bare plaster and worn wooden floorboards.

He threw himself into the chair at his desk as soon as its outline was more than a hazy shadow and stared at the diary's page.

Surely the boy would have questions. It was impossible that he would not. He raised his quill, ready to write the boy's name in an effort to draw him back into conversation when Potter beat him to it.

_'Hagrid!' _he wrote, perhaps as alarmed and unnerved as Tom himself, though for an entirely different reason.

Tom didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until he let it out in relief. He pressed a hand to his chest and found his heart was racing. _'You know him?' _he asked, forcing himself back into character. The Tom Potter knew had no reason to be alarmed, after all.

_'Yes, he brought me my Hogwarts letter after my relatives destroyed the first hundred or so copies.' _

That _was_ news, and Tom frowned at the implication that Potter's relatives had had no intention of letting him attend school. If they hated the boy they should have been glad to be rid of him. To insist so strongly… they either feared magic to an extent beyond the average muggle or they were hiding something.

He couldn't ask now. It would derail the rest of the information he needed to impress upon the boy to ensure he wouldn't convey his existence to unfriendly ears.

_'He's a professor now?'_

_'No, just the groundskeeper.' _

_'You don't seem surprised it was him.'_

_'Not really,' _the boy admitted._ 'He has a cerberus named Fluffy he used to help guard the Philosopher's Stone last year. He also had a baby dragon, and it took us forever to convince him he needed to send it away before he got in trouble.'_

A cerberus _and _a dragon? Tom shook his head in disbelief. He'd always known Hagrid wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but that was pushing it even for him. It was astonishing he wasn't in Azkaban already, let alone that he'd been allowed to pursue his _hobby_ on school property.

_'Then it seems he's learned nothing since being expelled,' _Tom wrote, not bothering to hide his disdain. _'The monster you saw in my memory was an acromantula. They are class five restricted creatures, which means they are known to hunt and kill humans and they are frightfully intelligent. Anyone caught breeding them on British soil faces immediate imprisonment. For him to have kept one in a school full of defenceless children...'_

_'How did you know where he was keeping it?' _Potter asked, and Tom was pleased he hadn't leapt to the half-giant's defence.

_'I didn't really. I'd heard rumours that Hagrid had a new pet monster and had seen him skulking around the dungeons during my prefect rounds. I suspected he would try to remove it from the castle in the wake of the girl's death, and was lucky enough to catch him in the act, as you saw. Of course, he managed to overpower me and the acromantula escaped, but my memory was evidence enough of its existence.'_

Potter's reply didn't come immediately._ 'I'm still confused. If the acromantula killed that girl then why does everyone believe it was Slytherin's monster?'_

_'Because it was convenient,' _Tom replied._ 'The Ministry wanted a monster, not a pack of bullies. By putting all the blame on Hagrid the headmaster and his deputy could wash their hands of the situation without expelling any more students.'_

_'Maybe they didn't know about the others. They could have thought it was Hagrid all along.'_

Tom snorted in amusement at his naive optimism. _'They knew. Acromantula venom causes paralysis, not petrification. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Hagrid was being set up. Naturally, I confronted them about it, and even though I didn't have any evidence, I told them who I thought was really behind the attacks.'_

_'They didn't believe you, did they?'_

_'That's where you're wrong. They did believe me, and they thanked me for my diligent investigation by threatening to pull my funding if I breathed a single word of truth to the press. I was caught. I had no money, no family, and I couldn't afford Hogwart's tuition on my own.' _Tom's jaw clenched and his quill scratched deep lines on the page, shedding small blotches of ink. He paused, looking at the splotches in astonishment. It was unlike him to be so untidy, and with a small start of surprise he realized he was furious, even though he knew the story he was telling was a lie.

"It seems I've drawn even myself in." He smiled wryly. "I suppose I should take this as proof of my success."

_'My only option,' _he wrote, _'was to play along, even though it meant the people who tried to frame me got off without punishment!'_

Potter seemed just as affected. _'That's not fair at all! Why would they do that to you?'_

Now for the truly delicate part — to sow enough distrust in the headmaster to keep Potter from tattling without coming off too heavy handed. Tom gazed out the window a moment, gathering his thoughts as he watched a bank of fog roll past. The dark faces of the buildings across the street faded in and out of view, elusive as dreams.

Tom had always preferred clarity, and there was nothing foggy or indecisive in his reply.

_'The deputy headmaster never liked me much. He didn't care that I was being bullied, and if he could have seen me expelled in Hagrid's place I have no doubt he would have done it. He was the head of Gryffindor house at the time, and was well known for playing favourites. If you got in his good books you could do no wrong in his eyes, but if he disliked you... well, let's just say that he did his best to make my life miserable. I think it pained him to award me that trophy, even though without my help there would have still been an acromantula loose in the school.'_

_'He sounds like Snape. Who was he?'_

_'His name was Albus Dumbledore.' _Even writing the old wizard's name made him grimace. For once he'd been able to tell the whole truth. Dumbledore really had kept favourites who he coddled despite their flagrant rule-breaking — Hagrid being a prime example. He'd also done his utmost to quash any enjoyment Tom might have found in attending the school. He'd heard some of the comments the man had made about him in staff meetings. How he'd labelled him as dangerous or mentally unsound. To keep from being vilified by the rest of the staff he'd been forced to adopt a straight-laced persona that had grated on him until it was all he could do to keep from screaming.

If he was to lie, he preferred to choose the time and place. Having his hand forced in such a way had been intolerable.

_'But…' _Potter's indecision was palpable through the page. _'Dumbledore is the headmaster. He's a great wizard. He couldn't be like Snape!'_

_'Being a great wizard doesn't automatically make him a good man.' _Tom himself was proof of that. _'His idea for introducing me to magic at the age of eleven was to set the wardrobe containing all my worldly possessions on _fire_!'_

_'He set it on fire?!'_

_'I can show you the memory if you don't believe me,' _Tom offered, gambling that the boy would turn him down. The memory wouldn't contradict the story he'd told so far, but from the speed with which Dumbledore had turned against him after their first meeting he knew he'd come off a little too strong, and he didn't want to risk driving Potter away now. _'Though I'd rather not if it's all the same to you,' _he added, feigning embarrassment.

Potter was quick to reassure him._ 'It's okay. I'll believe you, I just... I never thought Dumbledore would do something like that.'_

_'He puts up a kindly facade but he won't hesitate to sacrifice you if there's something to be gained from it. Harry, do you understand why you need to keep all this a secret? There's no telling what Dumbledore will do if he decides you're a threat.'_

_'At the beginning of the year,' _Potter wrote hesitantly, '_after Ron and me crashed his dad's car, Dumbledore said that if he caught us breaking any more school rules he'd have to expel us. I didn't think he really would, but what if I was wrong? I can't go back to living with the Dursleys full time. They'd kill me!'_

_'Then you need to keep your head down,' _Tom advised, pleased by the boy's reaction._ 'Don't go poking around looking for the Chamber of Secrets — it doesn't exist and you'll only end up drawing more attention to yourself. Whoever is behind the attacks this time will stop on their own once the Ministry gets involved.' _

_'But… wouldn't that make me a coward?'_

Tom could imagine the boy at war with himself; torn between his desire to take action and Tom's recommendation to wait and see. He shook his head and decided to offer the boy a little practical advice.

_'There is nothing shameful in choosing not to act. If you choose to do something dangerous because you feel you should, and someone else is forced to step in and rescue you, then haven't you put two lives in danger? It's like the story of the three foolish miners who went one after another into a cave filled with toxic gas in order to rescue the miner who'd gone in before them. They all died, of course. The toxin didn't care whether their intentions were noble or not, and so instead of leaving behind one widow they left behind three.'_

_'I don't think I've ever heard that story before,' _Potter replied, and Tom got the sense he was sulking.

_'No? It was a rather common story at the orphanage I grew up in. The government conscripted a large number of young men to work in the coal mines during the Second World War, some of them orphans like myself. I believe it started circulating around that time. No doubt as a means of warning their new recruits off attempting rescues without first observing their surroundings. _

_'Please don't make their mistake, Harry. It's been freeing to finally discuss my story with someone, but I would feel horrible if it ended up putting you in danger,' _he lied.

_'Okay, I'll do my best—' _

The diary jerked violently against Tom's hands, startling him so badly he broke the tip of his quill on his desk. He let the book go quickly and watched in shock as the cover slammed shut.

What had just happened? Had someone walked in on Potter and confiscated the diary? He jumped from his seat and began to pace tight circles in the small space. Would they turn him over to Dumbledore? He couldn't allow himself to be discovered, not when he was so close to freedom! But what could he do? He was all but powerless unless he had a host to possess, but the only person he'd sunk his fangs into deep enough to allow for that was the Weasley girl and she was too far away to be of use.

Outside the wind was howling, the memory of a storm giving voice to the anxiety gnawing at his heart.

He didn't notice the diary creeping back open until the taste of ink once again washed over him. Turning on his heel, he approached the desk warily.

_'Sorry,' _Potter wrote._ 'Ron just came up to bed. I need to go now.'_

All the tension seeped out of Tom's shoulders. The room blurred around him, rewinding to a point before he'd broken the quill, and he quickly wrote back.

_'Goodnight Harry. Don't forget — this needs to remain a secret between you and me.'_

_'It will, I promise. Goodnight Tom.'_

The diary closed for good this time and Tom left it sitting on the desk as he walked slowly to the window. Staring out into the foggy street he contemplated how to proceed.

Dumbledore knew he was active in the school, but his inability to intercept the previous basilisk attacks proved his attempts to discover Tom's means of acting were little more than blind fumbling. Now, with Potter's tongue effectively tied on the subject, he should be free to continue with his original plan of bringing the Weasley girl down to the Chamber of Secrets, taking her soul and then using his new body to interrogate Potter. It wasn't an elegant plan, per say. He'd have a devil of a time getting out of the Chamber if Dumbledore came to suspect their location. The old man might be able to barge in himself come to think of it, the Weasley girl had mentioned at one point that he'd wrangled himself a phoenix as a familiar since Tom's time in the school, and they were notoriously hard to ward against. He could do it, of course… well, probably. He knew the theory behind it, but the diary's inability to simulate any conventional magic had once again left him severely wanting for practice.

Was there a downside to sticking with the tale he'd spun for Potter? He couldn't think of any, apart from a slight delay in his plan to interrogate the boy, and it _was_ a rather nice bit of fiction.

He drummed his fingers against the sill and watched a pair of crows bully a scraggly cat down on the walk. They pulled its tail and pecked its flank as the cat whirled in circles, trying to guess which direction the next attack would come from.

Who were Potter's enemies? His muggle relatives, certainly. That Malfoy boy, if reports could be believed. Voldemort, without a doubt… but not Tom Riddle.

Not Tom Riddle. What was he to Potter, then? A mentor? A friend, perhaps?

And what of Dumbledore? Was it possible that after tonight Potter might come to see the man as an enemy as well, or at least someone who wasn't to be trusted? He could use that to his advantage if true.

Torture was pleasant, but there was something so fulfilling in tricking a person into spill their guts by choice.

Who knew, if things went well, he might be able to keep the boy around as a trophy. And wouldn't _that_ curdle Dumbledore's milk!

There was also the issue of Potter's ability to set foot inside the diary and the curious green glow of his curse scar. Were those related to Voldemort's defeat? Would the boy have any idea what they meant if they were? The preliminary research alone could take months, to say nothing of all the tests he'd need to perform.

"What a bother," he muttered. "It seems I need to keep the boy alive after all."

There was still time to change his mind. He needed to find his way back into Ginny Weasley's possession before the games could truly begin, but when they did, he would be the one holding all the cards.

* * *

Harry Potter woke to a strange noise echoing up the stairwell outside his dorm. It sounded a little like a siren, but he'd never seen an ambulance or the police at Hogwarts before, and out-of-place fires were always extinguished by the house elves before they could really get going. He lay staring at the ceiling above his bed for a minute trying to make sense of it before he sat up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and fished his glasses from his bedside table.

"Whaasat?" Ron slurred from the bed beside him, raising his head slightly as Harry pushed back his covers and rose to his feet.

"I don't know," Harry replied, shivering in the cool morning air. "I'm going downstairs to see if everyone's all right."

"M'kay," Ron replied before his head dropped back to his pillow and he started snoring softly.

Harry rolled his eyes at his best friend's ability to fall asleep at the toss of a dime. He pulled on his cloak before heading to the door and padding down the stairs towards the common room.

It was chaos. Every female member of Gryffindor had left their wing of the tower and were packed into the common room. They crowded around the armchairs in tight knots or slumped against the walls, their faces pale and drawn. Many were crying, the loudest wails coming from a cluster of young girls who were being consoled by a handful of seventh years.

Hermione spotted him standing rooted in place at the foot of the stairs and ran over, throwing herself against him and dragging him into a desperate hug. "Oh Harry, it's awful!" she cried. "Ginny is—" She couldn't finish, breaking down in tears that send Harry's stomach plummeting down to the soles of his feet.

He pushed her off and ran up to the first year girls' dormitory. If the stairs had tried to kick him out he would have crawled, but for once they didn't flatten into a slide. He burst through the door and found Percy Weasley sitting on one of the beds, his head in his hands and his pale skin tinged green. In the bed opposite a small form was lying very still.

Harry approached slowly, his mind struggling to grasp how the shrivelled corpse could be Ginny. It looked as though she'd been sucked dry, her body hollow beneath the thin layer of skin stretched taut over her bones.

A gust of cold air brushed his cheek and Harry turned to look out the window. It was open, and in the faint morning light he could just make out something white gleaming against the dark wood of the sill. He stepped closer and saw a long white thread, thick as his wrist, extending down into the darkness.

Tom had been right.

He shoved his hand into the pocket of his robe, hunting for the reassuring weight of the diary, but of course it wasn't there. It had vanished weeks ago when someone ransacked their dorm. Still, the memory of what he'd seen — the massive spider erupting from behind Hagrid's back and skittering into the castle — played in his head over and over.

Was that movement on the parapet below?

He leaned out the window, peering down into the darkness, and swore he saw something black and low-slung slink over the lip of the roof.

A hand closed over his shoulder and dragged him back inside the room. "What are you doing?" Professor McGonagall asked, her voice shrill with alarm at having found one of her students dead and another who appeared seconds from throwing himself out of the tower.

Harry pointed outside. "I saw it, Professor!"

"Saw _what_, Potter?"

"A huge spider! I think it was an acromantula."

What little colour remained in her face drained away and Percy let out a strangled whine before standing abruptly and hurrying from the room.

"Look at the thread!" Harry insisted, dragging her over to the sill. "It climbed back down after it—" His voice caught as the reality that Ginny was _dead _and he'd never see her again sunk in. He swallowed the lump in his throat and pressed on. "After it killed her." He looked up at Professor McGonagall, whose eyes were damp with tears she was struggling to hold in. "You'll catch it, right?" he pleaded.

"Of course we will," she replied softly, pressing a hand on his shoulder. "Now, go join your classmates downstairs. The aurors will be here soon."

Harry nodded and slowly stepped away. He forced himself to take one last look at Ginny's body as he made his way to the door, steeling his resolve for what was to come.

The family of the student killed in Tom's time had been fed lies about their child's death in order to protect the reputations of the headmaster and staff. Tom hadn't been able to stand up to them, but Harry had both money and fame. If the aurors tried to sweep this under the rug, he would be there, shouting the truth from every rooftop in London if that's what it took.

It was the least he could do for a friend.

* * *

In the end his preparations were in vain. The aurors swept into the school in their armoured cloaks and within an hour had pulled together a squadron of their best witches and wizards to scour the Forbidden Forest for any sign of acromantula.

At noon the next day, the school was put into lockdown, every entrance and exit sealed and warded. No one was to enter or leave the school without the written permission of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Not even the cats could weasel their way out.

The school ghosts became their main source of information. Unaffected by the wards, they told them the aurors had found a massive nest of acromantula a mile and a half into the forest and were in the process of raising it to the ground. That evening the sky reflected on the ceiling of the great hall was black with smoke and falling ash. A strange scent hung in the air.

"It's the smell of spider flambé," Malfoy said loudly during dinner, his laughter clearly audible from every corner of the room.

Harry turned to glare at him and caught sight of Hagrid up at the staff table. The half-giant's cheeks were streaming tears and he quickly stood up, rocking the entire table as he ran from the room, bellowing like a wounded bull.

They didn't see Hagrid again after that. Harry heard through the grapevine that he was being investigated for breaching regulations on the import and breeding of dangerous magical creatures, and while he couldn't bring himself to hate the man outright for the pain he caused his best friend's family, he did hope he'd finally be held accountable for his poor decisions.

* * *

Ginny's funeral took place three days after the Forbidden Forest had been declared safe.

It began with a candle-lit procession to the school gates, where the coffin and family would then be transported by portkey to their family plot. All the students took part, carrying tiny globes of blue fire as they walked down the road in four silent, tidy rows.

A crowd of witches and wizards waited at the gates to receive them and their charge. Locals still on edge from the acromantula threat huddled close by the ministry workers and representatives who'd chosen to attend. A few members of the press jostled one another at the edge of the gathering, vying for the best shot. They received dark looks from the others. The Weasley name was well enough known in Britain's small magical community to provoke sadness and compassion at the news of a death, rather than the usual morbid curiosity.

Tom Riddle lounged against one of the gateposts, a hood pulled low over his head and a plump house spider turning cartwheels across his palm. How easy it had been, he reflected as Dumbledore stepped through the gate at the head of the procession, his face and robes uniformly solemn for once.

All it took was a quick _engorgio_ and the Imperius cast with a wand salvaged from the Room of Requirements, and no one — not even Dumbledore — had been the wiser.

The Heir of Slytherin walked the world once again, and this time he wouldn't be caught off guard.

The staff and Weasleys followed the headmaster through the gate, their heads bowed with grief. Harry was among the family, lending his arm to his young red-headed friend. After them came the pallbearers.

Tom offered the coffin a shallow, mocking bow before he dropped the spider and crushed it with the heel of his boot, leaving a smear the colour of old blood on the ground as he apparated away.

* * *

~oOo~

* * *

**Hello there, welcome to the end of this little story of mine. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it!**

**I've always had a soft spot for Tom Riddle, I think he's probably my favourite character in the entire Harry Potter series, despite how he was canonically portrayed as not quite living up to his reputation for being a master manipulator. This story began as a way to play around with how the conversation between Tom and Harry might have gone if Tom had been a bit more on point, and ended up growing into the 9k-odd words you see here, because apparently I'm awful at brevity.**

**For the moment I'm considering this story complete, however I did have a few ideas for what Tom could get up to after his escape from the diary, so I may end up writing a follow-up at some point in the future. **

**In any case, thank you for sticking around - and have a wonderful morning, noon or night!**

_All characters in this story belong to JK Rowling._


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